


Old Wants

by kaghani



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friendship/Love, Old People Making Out, Romance, also
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-18 03:23:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5896225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaghani/pseuds/kaghani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After fighting with Lin, Suyin reflects on where she and her sister stand, and what it means for their relationship. Her husband offers some love & support. (With a side of judgement.)</p><p>Missing moments type of fic, set in Book 3, Episode 6: Old Wounds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Wants

**Author's Note:**

> (Wow more hetero fic) I just realized that Suyin is so much fun to write, especially the Suyin/Baatar dynamic.  
> I hope you like!

The glow from Baatar’s bedside lamp is dim and warm when Suyin makes it to their room. With a wave of her hand, she closes the door, sighs, and heaves herself against it dramatically, lets her back drag against the metal. Her belt grinds obnoxiously against the door.

“How was your day, dear?” Baatar intones. He doesn’t look up from the dense volume on hydrodynamics he’s been devouring all week. Su sighs, but she’d be lying if she said his absent-mindedness isn’t endearing as it’s ever been. He’s the original inspiration behind Zaofu’s mission.

“Like you wouldn’t believe.” Suyin arcs her arms in a tight circle, removing her various ornaments. She thinks about putting them away in the closet, where there’s a velvet-lined jewelry shelf with neat, designated hooks and moldings for each piece. Instead, she dumps everything on the ground and shoves the pile against the wall, then walks to her closet, anyway. She needs to be in more comfortable clothes. “Lin _attacked_ me in the middle of Korra’s lesson. Just with her ‘you haven’t changed’ excuse, again, if you’ll believe it. It was a complete melee mess from the training grounds and into the courtyard.”

“What?” Baatar looks up from the book, at last, just as Suyin steps out of the closet with fresh clothes. “Are you alright?”

“Fine, fine. Just filthy and tired,” Su says. She feels his eyes following her – watching her pull the vest over her head and toss it carelessly to the side, yank at the ties of her tunic. She holds it in place before letting it drop, maybe a little coyly, and she turns in the doorway of their en-suite to face Baatar. “Lin, however, doesn’t look particularly good.“ She lets the tunic fall around her as she turns and steps over it, making straight for the bathtub.

“Suyin.” Over the sound of the faucet running, there’s a soft _thump!_ and the rustling of the bedding, and then Baatar appears behind her, her discarded garments in hand. “What does that mean?” he asks, deadly serious. He even crosses his arms across his chest, her clothes bunched and draped awkwardly in the spaces between his forearms, and Su gets the impression that he suspects her of having done something awful to her sister.

 _Half-sister_ , Lin had clarified. The bluntness, the harsh of Lin’s voice echoes in Suyin’s head. Is that what Lin thought of her? Some relation through her no-good mother’s side?

It _can’t_ be. At least, not after Lin’d confronted her today. Right?

Su meets Baatar’s eyes in the mirror, carefully pulling the pins from her hair one at a time. (If she takes them out all at once, her hair resembles something not unlike her dear Grandma Poppy’s pampered poodle-pig. Especially now that it’s gone entirely grey.) “She’s breathing and in one peace.”

Baatar gapes, and Su would might have found it hilarious, but she’s surprised to find herself so _hurt_ by it. She wonders if she should be, what with the way she’d treated that Equalist empathizer last year, and the antiques-thief a few years before that.

…But this is _Lin_!

“Look,” Suyin starts, removing her pants, “I’m not going to apologize for what happened today. Lin was in some…crazed state when she came for me. Aiwei says she’d just seen the acupuncturist. She fainted right after Opal stepped in –”

“ _Opal?_ ”

“And we took her straight to the guest house. Doctor Yul is looking after her, and so are the Avatar and her friends.”

Baatar doesn’t say anything. But he doesn’t move, either. She feels his eyes watching her again, as she gets her various salts and oils and perfumes out of the cupboard and applies generous amounts of each of them to the bath.

“And so am I,” Su adds quietly, turning off the tap and setting down the last of the jars on the edge of the tub.

“Su,” Baatar gently says, and it nearly has her in tears. She manages to swallow down the lump. Baatar drops her clothes into the laundry basket, and then moves in front of her. He takes her hands in his, and gives her a look so tender and intense that she feels her neck and cheeks flush with a prickly warmth. “Suyin, you are my best friend, but you must understand that you are one of the most ruthless and wild personalities I have encountered. I adore you for those qualities. Give your sister some time to remember that she loves you for them, too.”

“Oh, please.” Su ducks her head under his chin and winds her arms around his chest. “You don’t know Lin. If she’ll ever be civil to me again, it’s _despite_ those qualities.” It’s better than their current terms, she supposes. A moment later, she says so.

“She’ll come around, you’ll see. You’re the woman no one can say ‘no’ to.”

Su squeezes him tighter because she’s so grateful for him. And if she squeezes a little too tightly, it’s to convey that she understands the implication in Baatar’s words.

And Baatar understands the implication of that; when he kisses her temple, she feels his smile against her skin. She leans back to look up at him. “Join me?” She gestures at the bath.

Baatar immediately steps back and removes the light tunic he wears to bed, but just as he’s about to undo the drawstrings of his pants, he freezes. His eyes go comically wide, and Su is torn between laughing and asking him what the matter is, when he straightens up and spreads his palms like he’s holding an invisible ball between them. “You see? Do you see what I mean? I just…I didn’t even question it!”

Su’s laugh echoes loudly through the bathroom. She removes her own slip, finishes undressing him, and by that time, he’s laughing too. She tugs him into the bath. There’s a little adjusting, but Baatar ends up leaning against the edge with Suyin settled in his lap.

“So, what’s this about Opal stepping in?”

“Oh, she knocked some sense into us, right in the middle of our face-off. She told us that we’re sisters and we shouldn’t be fighting. I’ve never seen her so passionate about anything before.” She hesitates. “Do you…do you think that maybe Zaofu isn’t the best place for her to reach her potential?”

Baatar, in the middle of rubbing the condensation off his glasses, freezes. He clears his throat. “Well…what do you think?”

“Opal has a real chance at immersing herself in airbending and learning about leadership in pacifism if she trains with Tenzin.”

“Perhaps we could ask her what she wants in a few days. If you’d like.”

Suyin sighs. “That’s a good idea. I’ll miss her so much if she decided to leave.”

“Me, too,” Baatar says, squeezing her shoulder. “But it’s great that you see her life outside of Zaofu, Su.”

“What does that mean?” Su demands sternly, but her lips twitch and betray her.

He laughs, she tackles him, water sloshes out of the tub and he narrates that, because of course he does. He warns her to be careful with his glasses, she teases him, pretends to drop them. When he kisses her, she feels nineteen and invincible again. She can convince her grandparents to let her travel the world, she can convince a head-in-the-clouds architect to build a home for her, she can convince him to make it his home, too, she can have the girl who pulled her into her lap and read her stories before bed back in her life again. Her family, finally whole. 

Su tugs at Baatar’s hair, tightens her legs around his waist and _grinds_ , relishes at the feel of his arousal against her own. She makes that little gasp that makes his skin break out in goosebumps; his palms radiate the kind of heat that makes her glad she’s not standing, the kind of heat that makes her groan, seek more friction, his hands against her skin, his lips against her pulse, his chest against hers…

What happens after that is _private_ , between her and her husband, if you please.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I appreciate comments a lot :)


End file.
